There's A Bear In The Woods
by ardavenport
Summary: Roy and Johnny answer a run for an animal bite victim, but Johnny's the one who gets bit.
1. Chapter 1

**THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 1**

Squad Fifty-One rolled to a stop at an old two-story white-painted wooden house at the end of the tree covered dirt road. Big tufts of dry grasses dotted the yard, but the brush next to the isolated structure was properly cut back. Johnny and Roy climbed out, running around to the side compartments for their equipment. Roy got the drug box, Johnny the biophone.

Nobody came out to meet them.

Squinting in the midday sun under the rims of their fire helmets, they looked around. It was rare that someone didn't come running when they heard the siren.

"That's strange." Roy led the way up the front porch steps. The faded paint was pealing on the floor boards, but not too badly. The house looked old, but lived in.

"Fire Department!" Roy banged on the door and called out loudly. "Fire Department!"

Johnny peered over the side of the porch railing, trying to see around the house and then went to the other side. He turned back to Roy and shrugged.

"Well, maybe they're out back and can't hear us." Roy led the way back down.

"I don't know why they wouldn't hear the siren."

They tried to go around the side of the house, but there was a chain link fence extending out from the corner of the building.

Roy called out. "Hello!"

They went to the other side of the house, but there was more chain link fence and a shed with a padlocked door. Baffled, they went back to the squad, bright red in the middle of the open, dusty tan space in front of the house. Roy opened the passenger side door.

"I'm going to call in the address. Make sure we've got the right place."

Johnny paced around on the other side of the squad, squinting at the fields and trees beyond the yard in the morning sun.

"Dispatch, this is Squad Fifty-One. Can we have a confirmation on the address. There doesn't seem to be anyone here."

Nothing. He checked the radio. It was on.

Johnny impatiently peered around at the fences and other run down structures. He tensed. Something had moved in the shade between a wooden shed and a big clump of bushes.

Roy looked past the house. Hills. They had to be in a dead zone. They might have to drive back down to the main road just to check in. He froze, eyes going wide.

"Uh, Johnny! Uh. . . . bear!"

Johnny whirled around, opening the driver's side door and jumping in, throwing the biophone on the seat. "Close the doors, roll up the windows!"

"You don't have to tell me that twice." Roy slammed the passenger side shut and hastily cranked the window up, his eyes still on the large black bear that had come lumbering out from the shade of big clump of a bushes beyond the house.

Johnny started the engine.

Wham! Thump! Thump!

Roy sat back. Staring at the bearded man pounding on Johnny's door.

"Come out of there you varmints! You ain't gonna come here and kill my Sophie! Get out of there!" He wore a plaid shirt and shook a rifle at them in one blood-spotted-white bandaged arm. "You're not going to get my Sofie!"

Gage put the squad into reverse, accelerating backwards into a sudden jolting stop and then a hard left turn completely around and back to the road they had come in on.

"Johnny!" They went back through the wide gate, the squad bouncing over the dirt road. "What are you doing? There's a bear back there!" Roy heard a woman's voice shouting.

"Well, maybe that's who Sofie is." He kept going, eyes forward on the road.

"Johnny! He was injured. And there's a bear!"

"Yeah, and he was shooting at us!" Johnny turned the squad to the right.

Roy peered back through the window. The house disappeared behind the trees. "What do you mean shooting? I didn't hear any shots!"

"What do you think he was doing with the gun?" Johnny swerved the squad to the left on the winding dirt road and they bounced with it. He glanced toward Roy, his expression worried. "There was a bear?"

"Yes! That's probably why that guy had the gun!"

Johnny blinked, looking worried. He slowed down, then braked. The squad stopped in a sunny patch of road, shade trees before and behind them.

"You're going to have to drive, Roy." Johnny leaned forward on the steering wheel.

"Johnny, we have to go back! That man was hurt!"

"Roy, that man was shooting at us! Ow!" He pulled something up from his calf. "With this!"

Roy stared down at the silvery dart Johnny held out to him. He took it and turned it over with his fingers. It was the kind of tranquilizer dart used on wild animals.

"He must have been trying to hit the bear." But Roy did not feel so certain. The man with the gun pounding on the side of the squad had been angry at them. He hadn't been asking for help.

"Roy, I know when someone is pointing a gun at me! And he wasn't shooting at any bear!" He suddenly sat back, eyes closed, arm over his forehead, pushing the fire helmet off his head. It clattered down over the biophone on the seat between them.

Roy grabbed his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

Johnny dropped his arm and blinked upward. "I don' know."

Roy put the dart on the dash board. Hastily getting out of the squad, he ran around to the other side and opened the door.

"Come on, move over."

"Huh?" Johnny blinked and squinted back at him. "Oh, yeah." He slid over, pushing the drug box and the biophone next to him.

Honk!

"Sorry."

"It's okay." Roy got in and closed the door. "See if you can get anything on the radio." He started the engine. The squad moved forward again.

Bracing himself against the dashboard to keep from falling forward, Johnny reached down for the mic. "Dispatch, this is Squad Fifty-One. How do you read?"

"Squad Fifty-One, we read you loud and clear."

"Squad Fifty-One requesting assistance from the County Sheriff. Also Animal Control to capture a bear."

He lowered the mic and let his head drop.

"Squad Fifty-One, Repeat."

He could feel it . . . . whatever had been in the dart. He felt light headed, his heart pounding, arms weak.

"Johnny?"

Roy's hand closed over the mic that Johnny stared down at and pulled it away, the white curled cord trailing over his knees.

"Dispatch, this is Squad Fifty-One. Repeating. Require assistance from Sheriff's deputies and County Animal Control. Animal bite victim is trying to capture a bear with a tranquilizer dart gun. But he became violent and fired it at us. Also, we have a Code I."

"Ten-Four, Squad Fifty-One."

Roy's hand, with the mic, passed under him again, over his knees, dragging back the cord again. The hand grasped his shoulder, pushing him up and back. The hard seat back stopped him, his head falling back, hitting the rear window glass of the cab. Scratches and little marks marred the gray roof and blue sky flashed in through the top of the wind shield through the spray of tree branches passing by overhead.

"Johnny?" The hand on his shoulder squeezed hard, but not quite tightly enough for him to really feel it. "Hey, stay with me."

"Okay." He answered with no meaning, his head wobbling with the motion of the squad on the rough road. He was not okay. But saying that he was okay was better than not saying it.

He bounced with the squad over a large rut in the dirt road and slid to his left. Roy's arm and shoulder stopped him.

"Hang in there."

His mouth moved around another 'okay' but the word didn't come out. This was really serious; he did not know what he had been hit with, or how much. But it already smothered him with an anesthetic lassitude. His heart still pounded, undeterred, and he wondered why he didn't feel cold.

Roy's shoulder, unyielding bone and muscle, pressed unevenly on the side of his face. Eyes forward, he saw the road, Roy's arms, hands on the steering wheel. There was dust, a turn. The squad emerged from the shadows of another clump of trees into sunlight. He squinted and blinked, the light flashing and vibrating.

"Squad Fifty-One, - - eriff's - - - - orts - - - car - - - dy in your vicinity - - eet - -at - - - - oad."

The syllables came to him as familiar tones, but their purpose fragmented. They had meaning, but he knew that their importance was not dependent on him, so it was easy to let them go.

Roy moved, pushing against him and speaking, his voice, more real and closer than the tinny radio tones. He limply slouched down so he stared forward at the bottom of the steering wheel and the dark space under it, his face sliding lower on the side of his partner's blue uniform shirt until his nose squashed down onto Roy's lap.

The squad stopped, the motion pushing him forward, but something pulled him back. Roy's voice spoke above him and then the last support under his face left him and he slid down further, his eyes staring at pale seat upholstery, smooth, warm and nice on his cheek. There was a cool breeze on his hair.

Voices. Roy and another, unfamiliar and quiet. Mostly he heard Roy.

Something pulled on his legs, finally stirring him to move, though his limbs were uncooperative and heavy. He rolled his head and saw down the length of his body, stretched out on the bench seat of the squad, the passenger door open, his feet sticking out from it. Above, all he could see was the driver's side door frame and intense blue sky above. Roy, upside-down, appeared. His chin looked especially round from that angle. There were more talking sounds high above him. And poking and prodding of his body far below.

Johnny squinted and blinked. The sky brightened, bluer and bluer, the intensity of it completely blotting out Roy. Bluer and brighter . . . . .

. . . . . bright and white.

"Johnny?"

Johnny squinted and blinked. The white ceiling tiles suddenly dimmed to normal. Even the florescent lights weren't too bad. The head of a woman, her short graying hair crowned with white . . . . he knew her name . . . . . . she didn't work in Rampart's Emergency Department often, only when they needed extra help from upstairs. She was . . . . from upstairs. . . .

Turning his head on the pillow, he couldn't lift it but he saw the hospital room, white privacy curtain hanging on the right, blue blanket covering him. He felt queasy and limp.

"Johnny. Can you tell me where you are?"

"Yeeeeaaah."

He knew where he was. He just wasn't sure about where he'd been.

**

* * *

- - - End Part 1**


	2. Chapter 2

**THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 2**

There had been lights overhead. When they wheeled him down the hallway. Brackett. . . . a weird distortion of Doctor Brackett looking down at him from too high above. And nurses looking down at him. Which just wasn't right. He was taller than they were.

Kelly. That was Brackett's first name. Dixie and the others called him 'Kel', but it always sounded like 'Cal' when they said it. But he never used it. Bracket was 'Doctor Brackett'. Almost as if he did not have a first name.

Paul. He closed his eyes when he saw another face above him that shouldn't have been there. One of the orderlies. Not a bad guy. But he didn't really know him. He hung out with the nurses, but he didn't really compete for dates with them. Nice guy.

It felt weird when the hands grabbed him at the shoulders, feet, under his middle, fingers on his back where the hospital gown fell open. But it was quick, a moment of air underneath. Then there was a softer bed under him. A blanket snuffed out the cold antiseptic air, covering him. There were still more hands touching his arm, his wrist, reaching for him over the bed railing. And voices, softly spoken in the room. He did open his eyes and ask the nurse for some water. His throat was sore and the liquid felt cool and good going down. She smiled and wrote in her chart, metal rectangle supported by her arm and clasped to her body. That seemed to satisfy her. And eventually the movement and noises left the room.

Johnny sighed.

He felt more like himself. Less floating, less unwell, more like his arms and legs could move again. He just didn't want to move yet. Time was starting to slide into the right order for him. He knew he was at Rampart. That they were done with him in the ICU. And before that, there had been the man with a rifle pointed at him and then screaming and pounding on the squad. Driving away. Passing out on Roy. Blue light. Lights and dark shapes over him. Roy said something about a bear.

There was no gap at all in time between seeing Roy with blue sky above and then seeing shadowed faces and bright, blinding hospital lights overhead. Something was missing. He could feel fragments of things that happened to him. Bloodless sound and sight memories of lights and tubes and metal. But he did not know if they had happened this time, or were just leftovers from other injuries. He had been in Rampart before.

Something moved. He lifted an eyelid to see a white, knee length nurse's uniform entering. White cap on blond hair.

Laurie.

She worked upstairs at Rampart. Pretty, under thirty and she had always said she was busy whenever he asked her to go out. And now she was engaged to some doctor. He closed his eyes. He wanted her to just do whatever she had come for and go away again. She was also there at the end of his memory fragments.

"Hi Johnny. Look who's come to see you." She spoke loudly with that ruthlessly cheerful tone that meant she was not going away.

Opening his eyes, he saw her at his bedside. And two sky blue uniforms behind her. Roy and Burt Dwyer.

"Hey, how're you doing?" His partner gestured to Burt Dwyer next to him. "We were just downstairs and Dixie said you were out of the ICU."

"Hi, Johnny."

He pushed himself up as Laurie elevated the head of the bed. "Oh, hey. It's good to see you guys." Laurie wrapped a BP cuff around his upper arm. "Got dragged in to fill in on my shift, eh Dwyer?"

The other paramedic shrugged. "I don't mind. You've filled in for me plenty of times. But Roy never lets me drive the squad. Is he always that way with you?"

"Yeah, he's just like that."

Johnny's eyes flicked up to his partner who shrugged, not even hinting at the real reason why he always drove the squad out on a run. John Gage was marked for life. All because of that one time, when they were all new at Station Fifty-One - - - that one time - - - when he drove the squad out on a run.

And he turned the wrong way.

No harm had been done on that run. He had turned around and followed the engine. But the rest of the crew ribbed him mercilessly about it for weeks afterward. So now, everyone else at the station, even Roy sometimes, always gave him funny looks if he ever drove the squad out on a run. Even Captain Stanley, who hadn't even been there when it happened, but he must have heard about it from Captain Hammer, who was. It was just easier to read the map and let Roy drive.

Roy gave him a knowing half-grin. "Hey, the guys at the station send their regards." The BP cuff puffed up tight on his arm and then hissed slack again, Laurie listening with the stethoscope on his arm.

"So, how're you feeling?"

Johnny grimaced while Laurie grabbed his wrist. "Oooh, better I guess. Still a little fuzzy. I don't remember a lot." He cleared his throat. It still felt rough.

Burt grinned under his mustache. "Well, Dixie said that you couldn't tell Brackett your own name in the ICU, but you still managed to ask Becky Frobish what she was doing for dinner. That's how he knew you were going to be fine."

"Really?" His weekend was wide open, but he just couldn't remember seeing her face. "Well . . . what'd she say?"

"Uuh, I don't think she makes any dates in the ICU." Roy rested a hand on the bed railing, but Laurie interrupted, writing down his vitals.

"Well, you're looking a lot better now." She flipped the silver metal cover back over the chart with a snap. "I'll be back in a little bit with your dinner." She left, Roy thanking her as she went.

"Roy?" Johnny tugged the blanket up. He could feel a draft coming in under the edges of the sheet. "What _happened_?"

"What? You don't remember getting shot?"

"Yeah, I remember that and that crazy guy coming after us, but what happened after that?"

"Well, how much do you remember?"

"Roy, I don't remember _anything_. I mean, I remember that guy shooting me with the dart and passing out in the squad. And then . . . . everything just went blue and I opened my eyes and I'm here. What the hell was that stuff?"

Dwyer answered. "It was ketamine. Roy found a spare vial of it the guy's pocket after the sheriff's deputies brought him back."

"His pocket? Why were you going through his pockets?"

"Because he was unconscious after his wife clobbered him with a frying pan."

"What? That guy had a wife?"

Roy held up a hand, and Dwyer amiably nodded for him to take over.

"After we got to the end of the road the sheriff's deputy met us there. I was able to get Brackett on the biophone there and after you lost consciousness he had me insert an airway while the deputy went back to the house."

Johnny's hand went to his throat. "You started an airway on me?"

"Yeah. And an EKG. It was pretty serious because we didn't know what was in that dart then and some animal tranquilizers are fatal to humans."

"Oh." He cleared his throat again and put his hand back down. "Well, what happened after that?"

"The sheriff's deputy came back. With the man who shot you unconscious in the front seat of his car and his wife in handcuffs in the back. Their name is Conway, by the way."

"Hundcuffs? . . . . well, what happened?"

"She bit him."

"Her husband?"

"No, the deputy." Roy pointed to his bare forearm. "On the arm. Pretty deep, too; she drew blood."

Johnny frowned, trying to remember any of this, but there was nothing. "I don't get it. The run was for an animal bite. So, was it the wife who bit him?"

"No, it was the bear."

"I never saw the bear, Roy."

"There was a bear. Trust me." His partner raised his voice, not something that happened unless he was really upset.

"It turns out that Conway bought the bear a few weeks ago and he's been keeping it in a pen behind the house ever since. I guess he always wanted a bear. But it turns out that Mrs. Conway hated the bear and has been after him to get rid of it. Well, this morning, I guess the bear got tired of being caged up and bit Conway and ran off when he was feeding it. That's when Mrs. Conway called in the animal bite to the department. Conway is mad at her because he doesn't have a permit to keep a bear and doesn't want anyone from the county to see it. So, he storms off to go catch the bear with his dart gun, which apparently came with the bear."

"Uh huh." Johnny nodded. That sort of made sense to him.

"So, we walk in on this scene, Conway shoots you and we get out of there. But after we're gone Mrs. Conway comes after her husband with a heavy frying pan for running us off. Because she actually wants someone to take the bear away. So, about then, the sheriff's deputy - - his name is Markey by the way - - drives up on them just as Conway goes down. He wants to put Conway into his squad car and take him back to me. But Mrs. Conway is still upset and wants him to go after the bear - - which has run off again - - and shoot it. With a real gun."

Johnny scowled. "She wanted him to kill it?"

"Yeah. She really hates that bear. Anyway, while that's going on another sheriff's deputy shows up and he was able to help me with you, which is good because when Markey comes back, I've got to bandage his arm and look after Conway."

"Oh, well, sorry I was out. Sounds like you really had your hands full."

"Well, you couldn't help that. And I just about had everything under control when the ambulance got there. That's when Conway woke up and started yelling at everyone. That started his wife going - - she's still handcuffed in the back seat of the squad car. Then both of the sheriff's deputies are yelling at them to shut up while I'm trying to get you and Conway into the ambulance - - Markey handcuffed Conway to the gurney and he wanted to ride in back, too."

"You didn't let him, did you?"

"Of course not. He rode up front. But he had to give Conway a parting warning that if you died, he was personally going to arrest him for murder."

Johnny scoffed. "Oh yeah, that would have done me a whole lot of good."

"Yeah, but it got Conway all wound up so he didn't want to tell me how much ketamine he used in that dart. I don't think he really knew. The gun didn't come with a real bear tranquilizer, so Conway used ketamine because he could get it. Brackett told me that ketamine wouldn't have done much to that bear, too.

"So, anyway, we get to Rampart, mostly in one piece because Sal Korman was driving."

Dwyer grimaced. "That guy is going to roll an ambulance one of these days and I don't want to be in it when he does."

"Yeah, that ride was a little too exciting. And I had to have the deputies call dispatch to have someone come out and drive the squad into Rampart. And you went into respiratory arrest as soon as we get here."

"I arrested?"

"Yeah. Brackett got you through it. And your EKG was fine, but . . . . I really would rather you didn't do that again."

Roy finished with a tone of humorless stress and a trace of strain in just a few words that meant that he was working hard not to let what he was feeling go too far. Expressionless, Dwyer lowered his eyes.

Johnny grinned back. "Hey, don't worry about it. I'm not planning on doing anything like that again."

Roy's blue eyes looked back at him with equal amounts of relief and doubt. "You never plan on it. . . ."

The door to the room opened.

"Here you go." Laurie had returned with a dinner tray. "Roy, can you get that for me, please?"

"Sure." Roy helpfully grabbed the stand from beside the other, empty bed in the room and wheeled it over. He reached down, clicked the release and lowered the bed railing. Frowning, Johnny pushed back away from the intruding top of the stand that Roy slid over his middle. The dishes and silverware clattered on the tray as Laurie put it down, presenting him with a glass of milk, bowl of soup, crackers and a big cube of red jello still wiggling in its little dish. There were overcooked, mushy-looking vegetable-like lumps floating in the soup. Hospital food.

"Doctor Brackett didn't think you should have anything too heavy so soon after just getting out of the ICU."

He was neither nauseous nor hungry, but his stomach felt . . . . tense, as if it might need some encouragement to accept food. Real food. Not this.

Behind her, Roy and Burt were smirking broadly. They would tell the guys back at the station exactly what he was getting to eat. While they ate dinner. Mike Stoker was making fried chicken tonight, too.

"And I think Doctor Brackett wanted me to make sure that you ate your dinner instead of getting your friends here to sneak in a hamburger from the cafeteria downstairs." Laurie smiled sweetly.

Johnny had been thinking exactly that, but Roy treacherously waved to him. "We better get back. I'll stop by tomorrow morning and see when they're letting you out."

Dwyer opened the door. "Yeah, we'll say 'hi' to all the guys for you."

"But - - " They were gone.

"Do you need any help?"

Tight lipped, he grimaced back at her, not at all cheered by her offer.

"Well, Johnny, you always said you wanted to have dinner with me. Now's your chance."

Johnny wrinkled up his nose at the food on the tray in front of him, his eyes then going to Laurie's hands and that new engagement ring on her finger. "It's not the same thing."

**

* * *

- - - End Part 2**


	3. Chapter 3

**THERE'S A BEAR IN THE WOODS**

by ardavenport

**

* * *

- - - Part 3**

Johnny rolled over and opened his eyes.

There was a brick wall.

Oh. Right. He was in Roy's bed.

Or rather, he was in the bed that Burt Dwyer usually slept in on C-Shift. On the other side of the window Eric Benton was still asleep in the bed he normally slept in. It was light outside. Morning. And - - -

OOOOHHH-Blaaaaah, Eeeeeee-tweeeeppp . . . . "LA Testing with Stations 36, 45, 127, 106, 51"

Morning call. On the other side of the brick wall divider Captain Northrop answered with the station's radio call sign.

Yawning, Johnny sat up. Benton was doing the same along with the rest of C-Shift. They had four calls that night. Two for the squad. Two for the station. A busy night. Yawning again, he slid his bare feet into his boots and pants, stood and pulled up the suspenders over his shoulders.

Sanchez, C-Shift's engineer, was already headed toward the latrine. Gage went about his morning business with everyone else. They were all finishing their shift, but he was just starting his, after filling in for Dwyer and trading a shift with him to make up for the time he had lost last week. They all ended up yawning at the kitchen table, disassembling the LA Times that was delivered to the office door every morning and drinking that first pot of morning coffee. Benton looked up from the local section.

"Hey Roy, you're in early."

They all turned to look as Roy DeSoto, in civilian jeans shirt and jacket, came in. "Hi Eric. Hi guys. Hi Johnny, ready for another shift?"

"Oooooh." He slouched down in his chair and looked up at his partner. "Just give me a little break on that, would'ya Roy?"

"Rough shift?"

Everyone at the kitchen table groaned. Sanchez slouched forward over his coffee cup. "They all just went loco yesterday."

"Two car wrecks." One of C-shift's two firefighters, Shubert, rested his chin in his hand.

"Three house fires. Two of them arson." The other firefighter, Jenks, sitting next to him did the same.

"And a landslide." Captain Northrop sipped his coffee and shook his head. "And it was worse for the squad. It must have been a full moon."

"Yeah, Burt picked a great day to take off. An old lady threw up on us on the first run and it went downhill from there." Benton grimaced, then apparently the memory gave him an idea. "Hey, Johnny, if Roy gets dressed now, we can keep the squad covered and you can get that shower before your next shift." His eyes went to the other side of the table. "Okay with you, Cap?"

Northrop shrugged. "As long as the squad's covered."

Johnny perked up immediately. "Oh, hey that'd be great." He got up. "Hey, why're you in so early anyway?"

Roy grinned again. "Oh, yeah, I found out more about the bear."

Johnny stopped on the way to the door, his brows lowered. "The bear? They found the bear?"

"Yeah, it was on the news yesterday. Didn't you see it?"

"Roy, it was crazy here yesterday. We didn't see any news."

Johnny had not seen the bear. All he knew was that Roy had seen it and much later he heard that Animal Control had been sent to capture it. And then on his first shift after getting out of Rampart, he heard that Animal Control was still looking for it, three days after Roy saw it. The last known 'sighting' of it had been when the Animal Control officers had returned to their truck after trooping around in the woods for hours to find that their quarry had gotten in through the open window of their truck and eaten their lunch, a brown paper bag of sandwiches. Since then, there had been no sign of it.

"Oh, well, it's a great story - - " Roy grinned.

"Well, tell it to me in the locker room." Johnny tugged on his sleeve.

"I want to hear this." Benton got up to follow. "You guys?" But the rest of C-shift remained slouched in their chairs with their coffee.

Johnny led the way across the apparatus bay to the locker room. Roy started getting undressed while Johnny looked for a towel.

Benton stood by the door. "So, where was the bear?"

"It was in the house." Roy took his shirt off. "It was there all along, for four days."

"In the house? How'd it get in the house?" Johnny stopped, towel in hand, one suspender off his shoulder.

"Through the door." He discarded his pants, slipped out of his shoes.

"There was an open door?" Benton tilted his head.

"Not exactly." Obviously enjoying telling the tale, Roy reached of a fresh uniform shirt hanging in his locker. "There was a side door that was unlocked, but the bear knew how to open it."

"What?" Johnny stared back. "How does a bear know how to open a door?"

"That was one of its tricks." Roy stepped into his uniform pants. "After I saw the story on the morning news yesterday, I called Animal Control and told them that we called it in and they told me how they figured out where the bear was." He zipped his pants up and reached for his boots.

"When they couldn't find the bear they tried to find out more about it, in case it was from the area and went to some place it already knew. Well, it took them a few days, but they found the guy who sold it to Conway. It turns out, the bear used to be in a circus, but it got too old to perform. The circus gave it to a guy who told them he was going to rent it out to TV shows and movies, but instead, he turned around and sold it to Conway." Roy buttoned his shirt.

"Huh?" Johnny looked at Benton, who shrugged. "So, how'd it get into the house? And what about the Conways? Didn't they notice that there was a bear in the house?"

"They didn't go home. Mrs. Conway went to her sister's place and she refused to bail Mr. Conway out of jail. Apparently she's filing for divorce." Roy picked up his badge and pinned it to his shirt while he continued. "Anyway, opening doors was part of the bear's act when it was in the circus, and once it was in, it closed it behind him. And nobody thought to look for it in the house until they found out about where it came from."

"It was in that house for four days?" Towel and washcloth in hand, Johnny got a tube of shampoo out of the back of his locker. Roy was mostly dressed which meant that the squad was covered. "Well, what did it do for four days? What did it eat?"

"Whatever it wanted." The two others followed him to the shower. He stripped and got into the minimal shower stall while Roy filled them in on the amusing details.

The bear had gotten into every box and bag of anything edible in the house's well stocked pantry. And the refrigerator. And a freezer. And it had been trained to turn on taps, so the water had been running for four days. It had broken furniture, scratched up rugs and curtains, urinated and defecated in corners. The house had been thoroughly trashed when Animal Control got in and finally properly tranquilized and captured the bear.

Roy and Benton had a good laugh while Johnny showered and scrubbed his hair. Between the nauseous older woman and the man with the chairsaw accident, plus the drunk with poor bladder control, the last shift's runs had been messier than usual. Benton could have his turn at the shower when he went off shift.

Johnny had to admit that it seemed like just deserts for the man who had shot him. On top of that, ketamine, while a nearly fatal overdose for him, would never have brought the bear down. But it had been the only veterinary tranquilizer that Conway could procure illicitly and he had ignorantly assumed that it would work.

Roy handed him the towel and he scrubbed his hair, dried himself and then wrapped it around his middle as he stepped out of the shower.

Oooooooeeeeeeee-mmmmaaaaahhhh - BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

"Squad Fifty-One - Man unconscious - Four-Four-Seven Vivian Way - Four-Four-Seven Vivian Way - Cross Street, Morrison - Time Out: Seven Sixteen."

Grimacing, Johnny grabbed the top edge of his towel where it was twisted at his waist. Roy and Benton looked at each other and quickly shuffled backwards toward the door.

"Go, go!" Johnny waved them off, but they were already gone. He heard the bay door opening and seconds later the squad siren starting up and zooming out for the run.

Regretting that he hadn't gotten dressed faster, he sighed. Not much point in hurrying now. He collected his discarded clothes from the floor by the shower and took a couple steps toward his locker.

The door to the locker room opened. Captain Stanley, in civilian pants and shirt, stared back at him, clearly taken aback.

"Uh, hi Cap." Nearly naked, barefoot and holding an armload of dirty clothes, Johnny greeted his superior with a weak grin.

Stanley's dark brows lowered. Frowning as if grasping for a thought, he pointed to his left, toward the front of the station.

"Who's in the squad?"

"Oh, uh, Roy's covering for me, Cap."

"Oh. Okay, as long as the squad's covered."

"Uh, Roy came in early to tell us that they caught the bear."

"Bare?" Now Captain Stanley drew back a little.

"Uh, yeah, y'know the bear on that run where the guy shot me with that dart - - "

"Oh, oh, yeah!" Stanley held up a hand to stop him. "Oh yeah, okay. I heard about that on the news." He backed up to the door. "I'm going to go talk to Captain Northrop. You - you finish getting dressed." He escaped before his subordinate could say anything else.

Johnny groaned and went to sit on the bench by his locker. His boots thumped down onto the floor with the pants and dirty underwear. He had just started his regular shift with a weird, uncomfortable meeting with his captain while he was wearing only a towel.

Putting his head in his hand, he had a feeling that this might be another long shift.

**

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**##**##** END** ****##**##****

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Disclaimer:** All characters belong to Mark VII Productions, Inc., Universal Studios and whoever else owns the 1970's TV show Emergency!; I am just playing in their sandbox.


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